A good book? I’d rather have a bad one….

Friday was “World Sleep Day” and had the slogan “WHEN SLEEP IS SOUND HEALTH AND HAPPINESS ABOUND”.

The World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) says the three elements of good quality sleep are:

Duration – The amount of sleep should be sufficient so we don’t feel tired the next day

Continuity – Sleep should be uninterrupted

Depth – Sleep should be deep enough or sufficiently sound to be restorative and refreshing

Over the years I have been blessed, overall, with good sleep but there have been blips… stress, family issues, work worries, ill health can all affect our quality of sleep and as a result our “health and happiness”. Clients often put at the top of their list of issues they would most like resolved, “poor sleep”.

So what do you use to help you “drop off”? I’ll confess to having tried the usual suspects including – a warm bath with candles and soft lighting – unfortunately, as my regular readers know, I have the attention span of a gnat so after 5 minutes or so of mentally promising myself that this time I really really really will get round to re-grouting those bathroom tiles and repainting the ceiling I’m definitely more “stressed” than “sleepy”!

I have also tried reading a book before bed to help me wind down. However, after getting too engrossed in one too many a spellbinding novel and reading well past an acceptable hour I have found myself rather less perky the next day than socially acceptable. Perhaps a bad book might be better in the hope that it will bore me to sleep??

So if sleep is the key to our “health and happiness” what should we be doing to ease our entry into the “land of nod”?

The WASM website says “Sleep centres around the world are invited to teach their constituents that sleep hygiene is conducive to the preservation of high quality sleep” – hang on a minute – did I read that right? Sleep “Hygiene”?? I like to think of myself as quite” hygienic” but have I been missing something all these years? Are there some special bodily ablutions I should have been performing before bed to ensure I get a good nights sleep?

As it turns out “sleep hygiene” doesn’t mean following some magical instructions on how to wash our bodily bits and pieces before bed, rather, it entails abiding by the “10 Commandments of Sleep”. If you fancy a squint at them they can be found on our blog page here (however, in my defence, if you have small children you may just laugh at them – most probably as a result of lack-of-sleep- induced hysteria…)